ECS meeting invited ALD history talk: slides and proceedings

In October 2018, I had the honor to give an invited talk at the Electrochemical Society (ECS) fall meeting, organized in Cancun, Mexico (AiMES2018). ECS has had an ALD session since early 2000s. For me, this was the first time to attend the event: I got a very nice impression of the ALD session specifically and on this massive meeting in general.

The talk was called "Learnings from an Open Science Effort: Virtual Project on the History of ALD". Abstract is as follows:

"This work summarizes learnings from an Open Science effort “Virtual project on the History of ALD” (VPHA), started in 2013 to clarify the early history of atomic layer deposition (ALD). ALD is a multi-tool of nanotechnology and has been e.g. enabler of the continuation of Moore’s law of transistor scaling. ALD has been developed historically through two independent routes: atomic layer epitaxy (ALE) and molecular layering (ML). Especially the details on ML have remained little known to a broader audience. In this contribution, learnings in VPHA are seen from the viewpoint of its voluntary coordinator (the author self) related to historical details of ALD as well as from an organizational viewpoint and some other viewpoints. Selected details related to ALD’s history not fully accurately described in three earlier review articles are pointed out. The work made in VPHA has resulted in journal articles, presentations and an exhibition, and VPHA has in part provided the foundation for granting the 2018 Millennium Technology Prize to Dr. Tuomo Suntola. At the time of writing this contribution, in July 2018, VPHA is still on-going, and more volunteers are welcome to join the effort."

The slides are available through ECSarXiv: https://ecsarxiv.org/u6vw7/ (DOI: 10.1149/osf.io/u6vw7).

Term "growth per cycle" (GPC) gaining wider use

"Growth per cycle (GPC)" (unit e.g., nm) and "growth rate" (unit e.g., nm/cyc) have been described as alternative names to denote the time-independent amount of material deposited in a completed atomic layer deposition (ALD) cycle. The recent Baltic ALD 2016 conference confirmed the trend which I have noticed already earlier: the ALD community more and more shifts to use GPC.

I have been advocating the use of GPC since the early 2000s. A bit of history may be in place to explain why I chose to use GPC in the first place---how did it all get started? In the following, I will tell how one specific person has played a major role in the background.

VPHA status update 2016-04-29

 The status update below was sent to 54 co-authors and 35 prospective co-authors.

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Dear VPHA co-authors and prospective co-authors,

About a month has passed since the previous status update on March 31. It is a good time to stop again and see what has been the progress of last month. You can access previous updates in this link. This status update contains information on the following topics:

1 VPHA reading for ALD 2016 Dublin

2 LinkedIn ALD terminology discussion: GPC

3 ALD conference list

4 VPHA organizational poster in the HERALD Helsinki meeting

5 ALD History Blog statistics after half a year of the blog

Snapshot of VPHA reading progress (46% completed)

It is roughly two weeks ago that we started actively distributing papers to read in VPHA. The good reported earlier continues. As seen from the images below, the total number of comments increases with a high "growth rate". The fraction of publications with 0 comments decreases and the fraction of publications with the desired 3 comments increases. Of course, there is still a lot to do---46% of the work is now completed. We have now 54 co-authors in VPHA and more are still welcome to join the effort and join the ALD 2016 Ireland poster as an author.  

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Virtual Project on the History of ALD (VPHA) - in atmosphere of Openness, Respect, and Trust